Optimal Variable Damping Control for a Robot Carrying an Object with a Human

This paper describes a control method of a robot cooperating with a human. A task in which a robot and a human move an object cooperatively is considered. To develop the force controller of the robot, the characteristics of human arm are investigated. The arm is forced to move along a trajectory in the experiment and the exerted force and the displacement are analyzed, It is found the force characteristics of the human arm is regarded as an optimal damper with minimizing a cost function. Then, the model is implemented to a robot and the cooperation of the robot and a human operator is examined. The effectiveness of the derived model is investigated and the experimental results show that the human moves the object supported by the robot with a minimum jerk trajectory.